Environmental Fluid Mechanics Research

and Development using OpenFOAM at

UT San Antonio, TX

Xiaofeng Liu, Ph.D.

6th OpenFOAM Workshop, 13-16, June 2011, PSU

Xiaofeng Liu, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, UTSA

Xiaofeng.liu@utsa.eduhttp://engineering.utsa.edu/CE/Liufac.html

Research Themes

• Environmental Hydraulics

– Particle-laden flows

– Buoyant flows

– Sedimentation and erosion– Sedimentation and erosion

– Surface-subsurface water interactions

– Industrial applications

– …

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Researches using OpenFOAM

• foamScour: Local scour around objects

• Seabed response under waves

• Large primary settling tanks

• Hydraulics in meandering bends• Hydraulics in meandering bends

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foamScour and Seabed Response

Hydrosystems Lab, UIUC

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Source: www.offshore-technology.com

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foamScour: 3D Scour Model With Free Surface and Mesh

Deformation(Liu and García, J. Waterway, Port, Coast and Ocean Engineering, 2008)

� 3D scour problem� Interfaces: water-air and water-sediment� Even worse: interfaces between object and air, water, sediment

� foamScour=� foamScour=� interFoam� +mesh motion� +sediment transport

2D Wall Jet Scour

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3D Scour around Pile using LES

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Seabed Response under Waves(Liu and García, International Journal of Offshore and Polar Engineering, 2007)

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Multi-zone coupling

Tt=t +0 4

Tt=t +0 24 2

3Tt=t +0 4

t=t +T0

Pore pressure in one period

Design and Optimization of Large Primary Settling Tanks(Liu and García, Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, 2011)

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t=0s

t=3600s

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Hydraulics in Meandering River Bends: St. Clair River Erosion Problem

(Liu et al., Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, resubmitted, 2011)

Area map of Great Lakes Bathymetry(The river is about 39 miles long)

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Current Development

• Gravity current simulations

– Based on multiphase buoyant flow solvers

– Buoyancy due to both scalar and particles

– Sediment entrainment and settling– Sediment entrainment and settling

• Variably saturated porous media flows

– Solve nonlinear Richards equations

– For ground water flows

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http://engineering.utsa.edu/CE/Liufac.html

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The XIX Computational Methods in Water Resources (CMWR2012) conference June 17-21, 2012, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Urbana, Illinois, USA

http://cmwr2012.cee.illinois.edu/

Announcement

Session: High-Dimensional Computational Modeling of Rivers and StreamsConveners: Marcelo H. Garcia, University of Illinois

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Xiaofeng Liu, University of Texas-San Antonio

Other sessions:• Numerical Discretization for Navier-Stokes• Numerical Discretization for Shallow Water Equations• Subsurface Biogeochemistry and Reactive Transport M odeling• Computational Ecohydrology• Coupled Atmosphere-Surface-Subsurface Models• Hybrid Multiscale Models in Subsurface Flow and Tran sport• Iterative Solvers•…